The idea to grant all players an equal choice in their Star Ship Bridge Officer layout is both old and long overdue! Especially now, as we get overwhelmed with Starship variants of the very ships we love, and yet are even more underwhelmed at the developer decision making about Bridge Officer layouts.

I am going to present an argument of why all Star Ship Captains should be allowed to choose what rank Officer sits at what station, given a very basic set of rules. I will also argue how such customization of bridge officer stations assignments are both fair, and how it will not severely impact the fundamental design principles of each class of Starship.

However, first let?s use Star Trek the TV show itself as a basis for this proposal. Therefore I ask, did lieutenant commander Worf use a different tactical Station Console when he was promoted to Commander Worf, or did only his rank change to demonstrate his growing skill and ability to perform the tasks of Commander from Lieutenant Commander? If you watched the TV show, you would know that Commander Worf used the same tactical console of the same tactical station on the Galaxy Class Bridge as was when he was a Lieutenant Commander. All that changed was Commanders Worf.

Now what does this have to do with a proposal? Well, it is rather simple really. I strongly believe that it should be the Captains choice, out of the available stations on any given bridge of any ship, who sits at that station. Of course, this is not to happen without limitations because this is a game and it needs to have some limitations!

Those limitations would be very simple: Every ship may only have, and must have, one Commander assigned station, one Lieutenant Commander assigned Station and one Lieutenant assigned Station. Furthermore, Cruisers must have at least two stations assigned to Engineering Officers; Science vessels two stations assigned to Science Officers; Escorts two stations assigned to Tactical Officers and finally every ship must have at the minimum at least one Bridge Officer of every profession assigned to the Bridge (Meaning no Profession can be left out of a build).

This of course opens up a huge amount of possibilities for all of the ship classes. The combinations of different builds are extremely numerous under this kind of system. So why is it that a cruiser under this design won?t be able to out DPS an Escort? AHA!!! A Cruiser won?t be able to out DPS an Escort due to the second most significant aspect of this proposal. That is how console upgrades and devices will be handled under this system!

All ships will receive five Console upgrade slots depending on class. For example: A Cruiser will receive five Engineering Console upgrade slots with the option of either two Science, three tactical or three science and two tactical depending on if the Cruiser is more combat centric or more exploration centric.

For an example, the Federation Assault Cruiser would have EC- 12345 SC- 12 TC-123. The same rule will be applied to Science Vessels and Escorts! This will guarantee that Cruiser will always have an edge at being able to withstand more damage and that Escort will always have the highest Damage potential; while Science Vessels will always have the most effective CC. What these changes guarantee is that the game will allow much more diversity in what abilities a ship might have on board! Is that Cruiser packing better Tactical Abilities such as APO so that it can turn better in combination with AUX-ID? Is that Escort packing a Warp plasma surprise? Is that Science Vessel going to take my weapons offline with BTW-III?

This fundamental change could make the game much, much, much more enjoyable for all. Freedom to choose abilities in combinations that we haven even explored yet and at the imagination of each individual Captain. That sounds like a Star Trek game that I?d really very much enjoy. For now, I?m locked into whatever mostly un-imaginative system Cryptic provides next. My Cruiser, it may never know what APO could do in the right hands. My Escort, it dreams of the day it can dump some Warp Plasma.

All I ask: is that before some of you flame me, is that you really think for at least a good ten minutes about the restrictions that are being put in place. To those in the KDF who fly the BOP. Obviously those ships would need to be buffed in this kind of system because their only saving grace has been universal stations. However, can that be a different topic?

I have a few BoP builds that leave 1 class out. Now thay may be due to only having 4 BO slots to use, I do not know. I do know however without a 5th BO all my current BoP builds are toast.

To be fair, I have wondered myself what all uni BO slots would be like on other ships, you could have some real good fun with builds doing it. BFaW 3 would be great on a Galaxy, RSP 2 on an escort.

It would also make PvP more intresting as it would change all known tactics as you could really face the unknown when you open fire on someone.

However, this would also require some** balance changes as certain combos of skills could make your ship too strong for the game to have a challenge or completely ruin what is left of PvP.

Personally I think the current system is ok, as the old saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

** = "some" could be a few or all skills

You fly a BOP... so my question is then, If the BOP was made into another Escort so that it had the 5 Tactical Consoles... but still followed the same rules presented above, would it not be a lot of fun to build a ship under the proposed system? You get to keep battle cloak! lol

You fly a BOP... so my question is then, If the BOP was made into another Escort so that it had the 5 Tactical Consoles... but still followed the same rules presented above, would it not be a lot of fun to build a ship under the proposed system? You get to keep battle cloak! lol

I'd be afraid of de-cloak alpha strikes!!!! Very afraid.... lol

See, while I understand your point, however the KDF all ready have an escort - the Raptor. By changing the BoP to be an escort that invalidates the Raptor and then leaves us 1 ship less (and these forums are all ready brimming with reason for more KDF ships)

The only other feature the BoP has is the battle cloak, but anyone who pilots a BoP soon learns that is not such a good idea. You try making use of it in a fight and you soon end up sucking space due to the reduced hull. People think it is an "I win" button when it is not, it is more like an "I give up" button used at the wrong time.

With 1 less weapon, the extra tactical console really would not make much difference to your over all DPS. It is not an Alpha-Strike ship to be honest. It is an opportunistic ship (aka raider), you fly in to finish targets off from someone else who didn't quite do it or help another ship with their target.

In short, while your idea is nice for every other ship type in game, it would kill the BoP out right. One of the most known ships in STO would be pointless unless you remove a ship from the KDF

it has been my position in which i expressed in threads that boff slots would scale with the captains rank, so a vice admiral would have 5 universal commander slots on any ship they commanded, 5fore, 5 aft weapons slots, 15 universal console slots, 5 device slots, and all mentioned would scale with rank, and therefore allow the captain to customize and balance any ship they chose, anc this would help balance overall.

See, while I understand your point, however the KDF all ready have an escort - the Raptor. By changing the BoP to be an escort that invalidates the Raptor and then leaves us 1 ship less (and these forums are all ready brimming with reason for more KDF ships)

The only other feature the BoP has is the battle cloak, but anyone who pilots a BoP soon learns that is not such a good idea. You try making use of it in a fight and you soon end up sucking space due to the reduced hull. People think it is an "I win" button when it is not, it is more like an "I give up" button used at the wrong time.

With 1 less weapon, the extra tactical console really would not make much difference to your over all DPS. It is not an Alpha-Strike ship to be honest. It is an opportunistic ship (aka raider), you fly in to finish targets off from someone else who didn't quite do it or help another ship with their target.

In short, while your idea is nice for every other ship type in game, it would kill the BoP out right. One of the most known ships in STO would be pointless unless you remove a ship from the KDF

I think we could do something to resolve the BOP issue in the framework of my idea. Even if it meant giving the BOP another passive bonus or bonuses or even just outright allowing the BOP to be exempt from the changes. I however think that, that would be a bigger mistake.

it has been my position in which i expressed in threads that boff slots would scale with the captains rank, so a vice admiral would have 5 universal commander slots on any ship they commanded, 5fore, 5 aft weapons slots, 15 universal console slots, 5 device slots, and all mentioned would scale with rank, and therefore allow the captain to customize and balance any ship they chose, anc this would help balance overall.

Not only is that too many abilities to manage even with good key-binding, it doesn't sound fun and the lag along created from that would be enough to make me not play this game.

I think the 12 abilities are a good balance, which is also why I strongly felt that the special console abilities should have been stand-in abilities for bridge officers. But that is a different issue altogether.

1. Worf never became a commander. He was a Junior Grade Lt in season one and in the movie generations he became a lt commander.

Now this debunks the whole aeguement because worf did move consoles when he went from LT jg to LT and then when he was a LT CMDR he went to ds9 and had a slew of other reaponsibilities and then his own ship. The Defiant.

In first contact when he is on the enterprise riker jokes "you do remember how to fire phasers?". This is because he was a lt cmdr in a lt console.

I like the BoFF set up. it seperates the ships well. Gives them each an indentity. A cruiser shouldnt have omega 3 and an escortshould have extend shields three.